The Jacket
by aldkhfa142
Summary: Your favorite leather jacket? Dad's.


**Title: **The Jacket: Bright Kansas Sky  
**Rating: **PG, hints of violence.  
**Pairing/Characters: **The Winchester family.  
**Spoiler: **Non-applicable. Pre-series.  
**Disclaimer: **Don't own 'em. Just borrowing.  
**Summary: **"Your favorite leather jacket? _Dad's_."  
**Notes:**Dedicated to Zazaphram, a.k.a. **elaeazeph**, my partner-in-crime for an eternity and a half, who got me hooked on this series despite my initial reluctance. Also co-mastermind of the epic crack!fic that is SPN!FAW. Here's to 234,557 words, 431 pages, and lotsa evil suckas dead. And the story ain't over yet! (...'cause Sam says_ hell no, you aren't ending it here._) 

It hangs under a noonday sun, ensnared by the stench of cheap cigarettes and musty attic spaces. The handwritten sign tacked up above the crooked metal rack announces "leather", but most of the items are anything but. In that, the jacket is singular.

A dozen hands pass over it, a stiff thing dulled by the dust of dark spaces, before two seize upon its high collar. Tugging it free of the tangle of belts and gaudy purses, smooth hands drift over warm leather. Casually: "Now this isn't so bad, is it?" Hoisted higher by long, feminine fingers. "I think it might fit you."

"Yeah, it might," the man replied – equal parts obligated interest and bored male. A barely suppressed rumble of _a yard sale is not how I envisioned my Saturday…_

Worn, calloused hands press stiff creases and trace tight stitches. A solid jacket, dark brown leather and neat lines of machine sewing, well-made. Scratched brass buttons, a sharp-angled collar, well-fitted cuffs. It burrows into the man's shoulders as if made for them.

With a few experimental stretches and his wife's approval the man shrugs the jacket off, folds it over his arm, and it is his.

As the heat of summer subsides into the first autumn chill the jacket rests in the damp of a closet. It's not until the trees have caught fire and the nights turned blustery that the man pulls it on. At first, rigid and unyielding: unused to the movements – reaching high for the keys on the top shelf, or long around the warmth of his wife, who is of swollen belly now. The leather squeaks, protests, folds in upon itself in taut twists and turns. It rejects the smell of oil and grease, of his wife's perfume. Of home and work and normalcy. Rebuked for the smooth, sharp flavor of fresh leather.

Weeks, months. Through cold wind and colder rain, through snow and sleet and ice, through the tang of the mechanic shop and the spice-and-flower smell of home. Through it all the jacket is carried, and softened, made pliable, only to disappear onto metal rack and dark closet. Another jacket, to be shrugged off and set aside, until the nights turn blustery once more.

Hunched beneath a heavy barrage of rain, sleeves pulled low and collar pulled high, the man enters Lawrence Memorial. Through antiseptic smells and antiseptic smiles he walks, his steps harried and his heart beating fast, skin flushed beneath soaked leather. The nervous shift of tapping fingers as his back rubs against the hard plastic of a hospital chair. The sudden jerk as he leaps to his feet, the low rumble of, "How is—" the suppressed _she_, and the abrupt skip-jump of his breath as he realizes: "are they?"

In the warm artificial light of the house that is home, soft, tiny hands grip the edges of the jacket, at first nothing but gentle tugs until the baby is strong enough to grip and twist. The man's heart is happy, slow, content, each time tiny balled fists grip the edges of softening leather.

The jacket softens. Fingers curl and pull and twist, and slowly the sharp-sweet-tang of tannins and oil is fading into home, and infant, and wife.

In the speckles of sunlight thrown through the trees the smooth arms of his wife, wrapped around high shoulders. Pull, turn, and he spins her in a sharp circle.

In the cool glow of sunset a blonde head is burrowing into the depths of the jacket, listening to the steady thrum of his father's heartbeat below, the crackle of the radio telecast, the hitch before a thrilling strike-out on the grassy playing field many miles away.

Time spreads. The woman's arms wrap around cool leather for the morning hug goodbye again, again. From the soft scents of home to the hard-edged tang of work. And in the warmth of afternoon knees rest upon the jacket's shoulders as the man grips his son's feet. The boy splays fingers out wide to bright Kansas sky.

Again through the doors of a hospital: new, soft hands, feet, curls of hair and wide eyes. Familiar hands are tugging at the jacket's edge with an eager whisper of "Can I see?"

Days, weeks, months. Summer comes and the jacket disappears; autumn reappears and so does it, stiff with the dark but all the quicker to conform to the bend of the man's shoulders and the gentle curl of the new baby's hands.

Time turns. One final rest for the jacket in the warmth of the closet.

Heat that is not the sun chokes the life out of home. Screams, shouts, and the bellow of fire. The jacket hangs and bakes and waits and falls.

When the heat has passed and ash has sifted down from troubled air to an abandoned floor, familiar hands pull it loose from a tumble of windbreakers and sports jackets, dusting away ash and soot, folding it into the crook of an elbow. Worn leather is carried into sunlight that is colder than before as the house that is a home is left behind.

There is still the child who had sat upon the jacket's shoulders, and the new soft thing that now soaks the jacket's lapel with tears as calloused hands pat its back. Many nights the jacket wraps around the older's shoulders, swallowing both, hiccupping baby and solemn child. Shrouding, guarding against the shadows that used to be empty.

When leather sleeves do not hang empty or encircle the somber children, they are upon the man. No longer familiar home, work, routine. Into the unfamiliar they delve.

Into unfamiliar places: dimly-lit bars, cold parking lots, and a house that smells of incense and mysticism, the brush of fingers that pass directly through stiff leather to the troubled heart beating beneath.

Into unfamiliar lands: high mountains and low valleys; broad fields of grain baking in the sun and shadowed forests choked by moisture.

Into unfamiliar worlds.

The man's skin goes chill and clammy beneath warm leather, cold sweat, as the screech of that which should not be shatters calm collected reality. That which should not be: echoes of the night that heat enveloped home, the night soft memories and softer hands passed into flame. His hands grip the shotgun tighter and his heart beats faster than ever before, then he tumbles, abrasive grit tearing into dark leather, and he catches himself and thrust – snarl – the deathbed cold of a spirit drawn to the life and breath and sunlight it cannot have. And as death draws near the man vibrates with life, the pull of fear and determination and adrenaline through a swift-beating heart.

In the bland stranger's comfort of a motel room his heartbeat at last slows and his shaking hands encircle a face flush with the thrill and the horror.

A thousand sensations pass through stiff leather:

The tug of claw and fang and death's essence.

The pat of strangers' hands upon aching shoulders. "Goddamn, John. That was something."

The chilling cold, stiffening and cracking worn leather. No matter how warm the sunlight, the nights are always cold.

Only the constant movement, the constant run and drive and crouch and fight, keeps the jacket pliant, absorbing, becoming: the smells of salt and gunpowder burrowing deep into every crease and wrinkle. No longer of oil and grease and the woman's soft fragrance. Of exhaust, smoke, warm alcohol; of soap and iron and salt, the jacket always smells, pressed against the smooth leather of the humming Impala's seat. There is blood, sulfur, dirt. The smells of children, home, a woman's arms are light memories held only within the deepest layers. In the lining, beside the stench of fire long past.

A hundred motel rooms and a thousand towns come and go, nothing but the fleeting scent of the man. The jacket retains that peculiar odor of father-hunter-widower, of that which should not be and yet is.

Even when laid across the back of an unfamiliar motel room; folded neatly on the sun-soaked seat of the dark car; when the man rests and the older boy's hands carefully mend rips and tears, passing needle and thread through with infinite care, gently working the blood and dirt from roughened leather, the smell remains.

Through the nights spent around the shoulders of the younger, crouched in the shadows of the car's backseat. Through the days of summer, when it is shucked for t-shirts and wide open roads and two boys in the back seat playing cards as the sharp thrum of guitar and bass spread across the speakers. The jacket remains a part of its owner, for no matter how warm the day, colder nights follow, and the jacket retains all. It is the bend of his elbow as he perfects the aim which keeps him alive. The strain of his shoulder as he reaches into the undercarriage of the car that is now a home, replacing the latest malfunctioning part. The agitated pull of his shoulders as his voice rises, falls, thunders low and rumbling in argument with the son who remembers nothing of dead homes and dead mothers.

It is all, every stitch, suffused with the shift of the man's weight and the beat of his heart. The dark stains of blood and sweat worn into lining. The harsh, stubborn grit ground into an exterior baked hard by fire and cold. It is the moonlight across the sleek black of his car and the warmth of small hands around his shoulders when he returns to motels which are not home, save the children inside.

Years, and years, and years, it is the man: the father-hunter-widower.

Time grows and soft children are soft no longer: the younger's voice grows as harsh, as stubborn, and the older's hands as steady and calloused. The child who had lain in the glow of television and listened to the steady pull of breath is a child no longer. The claws of a beast that shifts and writhes in the moonlight hook and twist and hurl, and the man is hitting the earth hard, blood hot and thick against the jacket's lining, and the child-that-is-not is step, plant, solid impact of cold iron into quivering dust and death. The beast howls and jerks and dies. Strong hands grip the jacket's shoulders and help the man to his feet.

When the blood is washed away and the rips mended familiar hands hold it, thoughtful, hanging over an unfamiliar floor. Then they are passing it away, and startled younger hands are gripping it, and the man's voice is smiling. "Don't look at me all stupid. It's yours. Keep it."

"But Dad—"

Rough hands have already let go. Palm up, dismissive; he turns and heads away, and the boy runs his thumb over well-worn leather. When no one is around he slowly, cautiously swings it over his shoulders.

The jacket, smelling and feeling and humming of John Winchester, soaks into new shoulders, young arms, and the thrum of a different heart.

_Finis._


End file.
